HARMONY IN SILVER 



ROM this procession of autumnal days, 

 wrought upon the temple of time in a 

 frieze of manifold colours, and bearing 

 designs now simple, now splendid, now 

 ornate and elaborate, now austere and economic, yet 

 never parsimonious, there gleam out for me certain 

 silver noontides, amid other October mornings wholly 

 gold. These last, indeed, carry the sunset of the 

 year's glory to its culmination of pure primary colour, 

 to the unnumbered tints of the dying hour of the 

 leaves — fair things that have felt the fingers of frost 

 in the starry hour before dawn, and now, under sun- 

 light, shine, fretted with gossamers, be -diamonded 

 with dew, in the sharp, misty breath of the morning. 

 Nature's sunlit reds and scarlets, her mysteries of 

 sea-blue shadows under the yellow elms, of spacious, 

 far-flung hazes, dislimning in the low beams of the 

 sun — these phenomena, woven of crystal air and 

 cloudless skies, belong to the golden hour ; but, 

 amid them, as though weary of such opulence, my 

 western world once awakened and robed herself in 

 grey. A homespun garment of cloud she donned, 

 and the ritual of Autumn ceased awhile, for there 



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